Brewer has long been captivated by Sir Walter Raleigh's writings about his travels in Venezuela more than 400 years ago. And citing stories related by Raleigh, Brewer is convinced that the lost city of El Dorado, named after an Indian headman who covered himself in gold dust, remains hidden in Venezuela's jungles.

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He hopes to prove it by returning to explore a site in the Amazon where in 1990 he unearthed a find of pottery shards, made of clay mixed with gold dust.

Brewer, the grandson of a British diplomat who married a Venezuelan, has always been fascinated by subjects from botany to anthropology. While growing up in Caracas, his father urged him to specialize, so Brewer became a dentist like his dad.

But he soon gravitated to broader interests. In 1961, he went to live with the Yekuana Indians, performing dental anthropological studies and learning their language. He did similar work among the isolated Yanomami Indians.

The author Patrick Tierney takes a critical view of Brewer in his book "Darkness in El Dorado," accusing him of clandestine gold mining and saying repeated expeditions involving him, scientists and journalists were harmful to the Yanomami.

Brewer calls them false accusations prompted in part by his own complaints that Catholic missionaries have harmed the Indians. He acknowledges trying to get involved in gold mining elsewhere but says he gave up because he couldn't obtain permits.

Instead, he has excelled at other pursuits. He designed his own survival knife, gathered rare plants for collections and published eight books with photographs taken during his forays.

The government used to support his expeditions, but today he struggles to obtain funding and asks scientists to pay their own way on rented helicopters.

Brewer, who has five children from two marriages, sometimes regrets his decision in 1978 to give up dentistry _ and the financial security it brought.

His most harrowing experience came when he was shot during a 2003 burglary. Wounded in the shoulder, he shot and killed one of the intruders. Bullet fragments remain lodged in his shoulder, but he has not let the injury limit him on outings, boasting he can go for long periods without food or water and still swim faster than most men half his age.

His boyish enthusiasm shows as he collects ferns and flowers outside the cave, reciting their Latin names as he presses them into his log book.

"You have to have a childish, inquisitive nature," he says. "I'm discovering new caves, places where people never imagined before. I'm getting answers where no one ever asked questions before."

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